


The Best He Could Ask For

by roserelease



Category: DCU - Comicverse, Red Hood and the Outlaws
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:12:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roserelease/pseuds/roserelease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Good food, good friends, and decent television. What more could a guy ask for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best He Could Ask For

The poor delivery boy looked like he didn’t know what to think when he arrived to their hotel room with their long-ass order. Practically every meal possible on the hotels list - and _then_ some - sat high and proud on shining silver trays. They were just packed with: well-done steak, stuffed and grilled chicken breast, fluffy mashed potatoes with decorative garnishes, steamed vegetables of all sorts, pasta dishes whose names were a delicious tongue-twister in Roy’s mouth. And then there were the side dishes: a bowl of side Caesar salad, a plate of garlic bread with extra melted cheese (as per Roy’s request), and another of crispy bruschetta.

Roy could only guess what the delivery boy thought when he looked into the room and saw the three of them. Two rich boys with too much time and money on their hands and their exotic, alien girlfriend, most likely. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d gotten such a reaction. Even the receptionist at the front desk had eyed them strangely when they’d walked in, covered in dirt and sweat from their small “run in” with some robbers just a few blocks down. But she wouldn’t have known that, not when they were in their civilian wear. Any number of scandalous assumptions could have been - and probably were - made.

The funny thing was that if the delivery boy assumed as such, he wouldn’t exactly be wrong. Well, he would be on the “too much time and money” bit – it’s really just Jason with the dough. Any extra green he used to have – and boy did he ever used to have plenty of it – was long spent and gone. And Kori? She wasn’t the type to really race after human luxuries. Any money she had mainly went towards necessities, only occasionally splurging when it came to what the three of them indulged in the most: Food.

To the delivery boy, and the chefs who had prepped and cooked the food, and the hotel’s other occupants who had caught a glance of the small train of rolling tables that were all pushed and pulled to their room, they were just three kids goofing off. Wasting money, wasting time, and wasting resources. Irresponsible, immature, idiotic.

But what Roy was certain most of them _didn’t_ know was what it was like to go hungry. For days, weeks, months, _years_ if things are bad enough. To be surviving off nothing but what little you can steal and salvage while you’re lost and alone on the streets of a fucked-up city; off the uneven waves of a delirious heroin high and the always finite stash it’s derived from; or even from the meager scraps that unforgiving captors are sometimes reminded now and again to throw at your feet, sometimes close enough for you to actually reach and gulp down in one desperate swallow.

All that food for just three people? Yeah, it did look pretty bad. But it was an unspoken rule amongst the three of them whenever they bunked in the same room: Order enough for everyone, and then order some more. Sometimes, you just don’t know what tomorrow will bring, if the dinner you just had will be the last one you _do_ have for a long time. It’s something they all haven’t really gotten over, even with their pasts pushed behind them. It’s an instinct they can’t shake, no different from their other ones. A startling sound behind them? Their hands go for their weapons or begin to form some starbolts. Someone compliments their skills? Shrug it off or crack a terrible joke.

So in spite of it looking like the beginnings of a mini hotel party, it’s anything but. Maybe it could be called a celebration that they’re all still alive, that they’re all still _here_ , but Roy doesn’t think anyone but him would see it that way. Not too long ago, he wouldn’t have imagined himself here at all. Not on this side of the world, not in decent clothes, and certainly not with people like Jason and Kori.

All of this was the last thing he’d imagined himself when he’d lying in dank alley ways, too high to really focus on anything by a cold breeze or a startling sound, not high enough to have forgotten himself.

It doesn’t matter. He really couldn’t complain, either way. They’ve got a pretty comfortable room, a nice view, some nostalgic television shoes marathoning on some channel Roy had never heard of before, and all the food they could need for the evening. And what was more, he got to share all of this with two of the most intelligent, skilled people he’d ever had the pleasure of fighting crime with. Two people who, for some ungodly reason, decided that they could put up with him for longer than a minute. If that wasn’t something to be thankful for, than Roy didn’t know what was.

With their respective spots in the room taken, and each with a plate piled high with anything and everything they could ever want, Roy held up his beer and gave his comrades his most dazzling smile.

“Bon appetite, everyone.”

Good food, good friends, and decent television. What more could a guy need?


End file.
